The Theory of Everything

An Illusion Review by Joan Ellis

For all the right reasons, The Theory of Everything is an exhausting
movie. As we enter the life of Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne), the 21 year old
Ph.D candidate is racing happily around the Cambridge campus on a bicycle.
Several scenes later a doctor tells the now symptomatic young man that he will
be dead in two years of Motor Neuron Disease. “Your thoughts won’t change, but
no one will know what they are,” the good doctor says as he leaves Hawking
sitting alone in the hospital hall.
This punch to
the audience gut arrives just as we have begun to warm to the happy young fellow
as he falls shyly in love with Jane (Felicity Jones). He tells her about his
dream: to form a single, elegant equation that explains everything in the
universe. And Jane, a degree candidate in Language Arts, responds with a mind
that darts with wonder through a world of ideas.
As the story
unfolds, the thought is inevitable: “That couldn’t happen in real life.” But it
did happen in their real lives. Stephen Hawking is still alive in his seventies
after a career spent forming his theory (see A Brief History of Time) and
receiving honors all over the world. We see the enormity of what he accomplished
with his intact brain and Jane’s care and understanding during his devastating
disease.
If those are
the bare bones of the actual Stephen Hawking story, it would be hard to
exaggerate what Eddie Redmanyne and Felicity Jones have done in creating these
characters on screen. Jones steers Jane through emotions that range from fierce
protection of her husband to pride in his unaffected mind to eventual misery in
the daily responsibilities of caring for him and their three children.
Redmayne
takes Hawking from despair after the diagnosis through the next fifty years as a
physicist of groundbreaking brilliance. Hawking’s movements, limited and often
impossible, are familiar to the public, but Redmayne’s mastery of the condition
at all stages of the disease and then in progression during the filming of the
movie is extraordinary.
What sets
Redmayne’s Hawking apart from most other courageous performances is the way he
maintains his droll humor at the worst of times. His responses, often one
sentence shots coming through the computerized voice, come from Hawking’s still
brilliant mind.
Redmayne and
Jones are given fine support by Harry Lloyd as Hawking’s college pal, Dennis
Sciama as his professor, and then by the two people they eventually love. Elaine
Mason plays his nurse and Charlie Cox is choirmaster Jonathan Hellyer Jones who
had been integral in the daily life of caretaking and raising the family before
the years took their toll on the Hawkings’ marriage.
Eddie
Redmayne’s ability to convey genius, humor, and acceptance even after Hawking
couldn’t move his formerly expressive facial muscles is overwhelming. His
portrait of a brain undamaged in a body destroyed is a brilliant acting
achievement.